Cafe Demitasse and Trystero Coffee Launch Demitasse Roasting

With coffee shops opening up in Los Angeles faster than the newest gastropub can fry its Brussels sprouts, it was only a matter of time before a few local coffee professionals decided to go beyond the brew and see about roasting their own coffee. Such is the case with Cafe Demitasse's Bobak Roshan, who is teaming up with Greg Thomas's Trystero Coffee to launch Demitasse Roasting. The new roastery's new coffees will be introduced this Saturday night, Oct. 13, at the cafe.

A partnership like this was not something either Roshan or Thomas anticipated. After all, Demitasse is but one year young, and Roshan though he wouldn't jump into roasting until the cafe was a little more established -- and even then, if then. For his part, Thomas says he "never planned to partner up with anyone." But, given that Trystero Coffee consistently scored highly during the shop's blind taste tests and that both can identify with being what Roshan calls "home coffee geeks turned serious," it was only natural that the two would bond. A roastery was born.

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Demitasse Roasting is using a Diedrich IR-2.5 to roast its beans; generally, it will focus on light but full-flavored roasts with "fruit-forward" notes. The roastery will start with three coffees (from Sumatra, Ethiopia and Colombia), plus an espresso blend called Cat's Cradle. Which would be a particularly apt name given that Trystero Coffee itself is a nod to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.

This literary theme, in fact, will unite all of Demitasse Roasting's espressos (Roshan, tossing around potential names the same way you do when you're thinking about having a kid or a dog, suggests that The Sound and the Fury might be a good moniker for a future espresso, one that we imagine would be bold and complex, with multiple notes that may be challenging to follow but well worth the effort). The coffees will be available in 12-ounce bags and priced between $14 and $22, and that's just the beginning: A subscription program and wholesale accounts are in the works. In addition, there are plans to offer unique opportunities like the chance to not only cup a coffee from Aida Batlle's Kilimanjaro farm -- see last year's New Yorker profile of her here -- but to taste how that coffee differs when it has been processed three different ways.